7. The Fall of Gen. David Petraeus

There was no more astonishing fall from grace in 2012 than that of the widely-lauded Iraq war commander-turned-CIA director David Petraeus, who was laid low in November by revelations of an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. The tawdry details of the sex scandal revealed a behind-the-scenes world of pettiness, social climbing and sycophancy that some saw as sullying Petraeus’s sterling reputation. The general, hailed for successfully implementing the “surge” strategy to calm Iraq’s civil war, and later supervising counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan, had spent years meticulously cultivating his “warrior-scholar” public image. The Broadwell revelations prompted him to resign, summarily ending the public-service career of a man once touted as a possible U.S. presidential candidate.